We're friends, aren't we? Friends can be honest with each other. They can tell each other they might want to consider taking a shower, given that it's phrased right, or they can point out that there's food stuck between the other's teeth, or give… hugs and all that mess. But the most important thing is that friends can confide in each other. They can speak sincere words in truthful conversations, without fearing they'll be made to listen to lovely lies. And because we're friends, you and I, I'll give you a brutally honest rundown of what happened after I found myself staring at a message written in blood.
I screamed my fucking lungs out.
Dane, up on the top bunk, shot up so fast she could've hit her head on Lonewood's smudgy low ceiling, and received what I would like to call 'the unpleasant surprise of a lifetime'. Or at least, I deduced that was the case; despite her normal loudness, I'd still never known she could produce this much volume when screaming. If you asked me if there'd been anything even remotely enjoyable about that night, I'd have to admit it was learning a whole bunch of interesting Spanish swear words my cellmate would never have dared to utter in any other situation.
That fun time didn't last forever, though. Within thirty seconds, we had a striking total of three correctional officers who'd been working the graveyard shift in our cell with us, frantically looking around to see what had led to us flipping our shit. The strong stench of blood alarmed them, as expected, and one of them dropped his plastic cup of water to the floor upon laying eyes on the gruesome message on the wall. Which, in all fairness, did not serve to make our cell look like any less of a disastrous warzone.
Not even Dane, normally so brash, put up a fight when the officers rushed us to the infirmary, everyone too shocked by the bloody mess in our cell. Who could blame them? I knew I couldn't. I just remained quiet while our underpaid babysitters escorted us through the old prison's halls beneath the white glare of fluorescent lamps.
It was better to keep my mouth shut and only speak when asked a question. And even then, I feared I wouldn't have any answers.
Deep inside of me, a faint glimmer of hope still lived. It told me soothingly that maybe none of this was real. That my bathroom illness still lingered, that the mashed potatoes I'd had for dinner had landed wrong, that I was sick and feverish and it was all a hallucination. Nothing to worry about, nothing but a fever dream I'd wake up from if I gave it time. But the stinging pain in my slashed palms felt real, hurt real, and our screaming still echoed in my mind, so loud it couldn't be my imagination, and the sheer panic and confusion on the correctional officers' faces couldn't be an act.
I couldn't pretend the whole ordeal was fake and meaningless. I wasn't that adept at fooling myself.
When we reached the infirmary, its nauseating antiseptic smell hit me hard. Dane was taken away to god-knows-where, and I was left with an officer and a young nurse who set me down on an examination table and began to treat my wounds. While the nurse applied pressure, cleaned and bandaged with soft hands and the skill of a professional, the officer bombarded me with questions. The nurse snapped at him to let me rest, and he said no, he said she doesn't need to rest, she needs to answer, and he kept interrogating me until my new guardian angel reached a breaking point and almost physically removed him from the infirmary.
As you do in prison, I stayed silent. I didn't answer. I couldn't even explain to myself what had happened, let alone to a tired officer still processing the night's shocking events. I'd rather have choked on the damned stench of disinfectants than tell him what I thought was going on, be it the truth or a lie I could feed him. It was as if my pathetic mind hoped that by keeping quiet, what had transpired would sink away and be forgotten, and no one would talk about it ever again.
Life, however, seemed to always hand me the polar opposite of what I wished for. Because the next day, Dane and I were the talk of the fucking town.
Not that I was allowed to mingle with my fellow inmates and hear much of it for myself, oh no. I was stuck in the infirmary, kept there as a... prisoner, so to say. I had to wait until some higher-up had spoken to his buddies and decided what to do with me. The only time I was allowed to leave was to get breakfast and I had to be flanked by an officer the whole time.
In the dining hall, I felt eyes burning holes through my body from all directions; overnight, the whole female population of Lonewood had decided I was far more fascinating than the scrambled eggs on their plates. I didn't doubt every hushed conversation taking place was centered around the strange, bloody occurence in B-block.
I'd never before thought there'd come a moment in which I liked ghosts better than people. But they, at least, still ignored me like they'd always done. So I kept my eyes to the ground and counted that one blessing in silence, and when I'd finished a tasteless breakfast within seven minutes, I was escorted back to the infirmary to sit and wait.
For two hours that felt like whole days, I made quiet small talk with the nurse without it ever really going anywhere at all, and I did my best to ignore the faint stinging of my wounds as I received fresh bandages. I wondered if Dane was being questioned and how long I'd have to stay put, watching daily life in Lonewood pass me by while I was stuck with no idea what would happen next.
As it turned out, I didn't have to wait too long. My relief came at the start of the afternoon, when the officer from before approached me and told me I was to speak with Lonewood's psychiatrist for a mental health screening.
They wanted to know if I was crazy.
I almost felt offended, but given the circumstances, the decision to have my mental state checked didn't come out of the blue. That being said, I swallowed my pride and sucked it up, letting myself be taken to the psychiatrist's office.
I wanted to wring my hands together to quell my rising anxiety levels, but my wounds prevented me from doing that, so I tried my best to focus on something else, not caring what that would be. A children's song my late grandmother used to sing, one she remembered from a childhood spent in London, popped up in my head, and concentrating on the lyrics seemed as good an idea as any. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
A greatz disturbing choice for a distraction. It made me realize my subconscious was still busy processing what the bathroom spirit had done to me; I was sure my pain was caused by the supernatural and the ghost who'd made me feel so sick was my main suspect. For the first time, the idea that it had been trying to honest-to-god kill me entered my mind.
Ghosts alone could only cause the living minor injuries, I knew that much, but 'gifted' as I was with the ability to see them, I knew I was much easier to affect, to harm, than others without my ability. While no spirits had ever sought to wound me beyond leaving the occasional bruise, the gashes in my palms and the message on my cell's wall proved the one targeting me now was attempting to take the Hurting Bailey Church Game to a whole new level.
And I couldn't escape it.
Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.
I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind when my officer escort left me alone by the psychiatrist's office. When my hands turned the cold doorknob and I stepped in, I still felt uneasy, but I knew I had to get past that unease. The wooden door creaked and the walls I saw upon entering were painted a soft, calming lilac colour. The office was full of bookshelves, filled with literature and guides and administration folders, and one of the shelves had been decorated with golden and silver trophies; judging by their shapes and depicted scenes, they were prizes earned in boxing tournaments.
On the far right of the room, where the wall had been covered in inspirational quotes ("If you're going through Hell, keep going!" - Winston Churchill), stood a spectral teenage girl, slowly banging her head against the wall. Her head slipped through solid stone, back again, through the wall, back again. There was no noise, nothing but the obsessive, repetitive movements of a disturbed ghost girl living in utter silence. It was eerie to watch, so I turned away, ignoring her as she ignored me. It was best not to enter a psychiatrist's office and start staring at nothing right off the bat.
The office smelled like fish. I turned to the left side of the room to see a man seated at his desk, munching on a tuna sandwich. When he saw me, he placed his sandwich down, rose up and leaned on his desk, the legs of his chair scraping the floor. I gulped.
The huge man was almost grotesque to look at. He had to be about 6'3, taller than me by a long shot, and there wasn't a single part of his body that wasn't unusually large. It made every movement of his look clumsy, as if his limbs were too big for him to handle. He held a pen in his hand, tapping it against a full black beard streaked with grey, taking me in with stern but friendly eyes while his free hand pushed up round glasses too tiny for him. For no reason in particular, I felt like he was trying to see how fast he'd be able to snap my neck if I got difficult.
The psychiatrist looked like a cross between Santa Claus and Frankenstein's monster and he had me at a total loss for words. So I waited for him to speak, keeping my mouth shut tight as I took him in.
"You must be Miss Church," he began in a voice not quite like I'd pictured it. I'd expected him to be loud like thunder and aggressive like Dane when someone got under her skin. Instead, he sounded calm, almost gentle, tone matching the friendliness shining in his eyes. He wanted to make me feel at ease.
I nodded and shook the giant hand he extended, grateful he was cautious and didn't put too much pressure on my damaged palms. When I retracted my hand without having heard any of my bones crunching, I almost sighed in relief.
"I'm Doctor Jones," he introduced himself, "but you can call me Henry, if you want. Are you nervous?"
I wouldn't call him Henry if my life depended on it. "No."
"That's good," he replied with an awkward smile, "because there's no need to be. We're just going to talk. I'm going to ask you some questions that you'll answer, and I'll take notes for my evaluation of you, and everything will turn out fine."
He wouldn't have been so sure about that if he'd known about the ghost targeting me. "Understood."
"We'll start out easy." His hand moved to grab his computer's mouse, dwarfing the damned thing. "Name?"
"Bailey."
"Last name?"
"Church."
"Age?"
"Sixteen."
"Do you have any siblings?"
"No. It's just me and my parents."
"Any hobbies?"
"Creative writing."
"Are your answers always this short?"
"They might be."
The sound of Jones typing away at his computer filled the office. Part of me wondered what he typed, but the teenage ghost behind me still occupied a sizable chunk of my mind, leaving little room for me to truly think of anything else. It occurred to me that she resembled Doctor Jones: tall, same dark hair, same broad build.
"How'd you end up in this place, Bailey?"
All of those questions and none of them necessary. He could pull up all my files on that stupid computer of his and see my whole life story right in front of him. Still, I answered, and truthfully, too. I had to make a good impression if I wanted to present myself as The World's Sanest and Most Normal Person.
"I needed money for a new laptop. A friend of mine told me he knew a surefire way to get some and I believed him. I should've known he was talking about a drug deal."
With Chris, it hadn't surprised me. I remembered the way he'd smiled at me as if we were part of a conspiracy together when he mentioned he had a shortcut to easy money. He'd said it so casually, as if it was nothing more special than buying popcorn at the movies, and his eyes shone with excitement, which left no doubt in me that he'd truly believed he'd been helping me somehow.
I'd known. Deep down, I'd always known. And still I snuck out at night to meet him and we disappeared into the night to sell cocaine to his 'boy', and I could've backed out, but I didn't, because I was young and stupid and a fool who'd thought she could rule the world. Then I went to prison and my high turned into a low.
"I went along with that friend, and we got busted, and now I have to be in this place for a whole year."
He nodded. "Never feels short, huh?"
As if he understood.
"That's right."
More typing. It surprised me his huge fingers didn't break the tiles. The ex-boxer at least knew how to keep his strength, of which I thought he possessed a great deal, in check. If he'd banged his head against the wall like the ghost in his office was undoubtedly still doing, he'd leave holes in it.
Oh, I'd figured the man out. I'd Sherlock Holmesed my way through his office, knew the type of man I was dealing with. The teenage ghost girl must've been related to him, perhaps his daughter, and even a lunatic could see she'd been mentally disturbed in life, what with her obsessive behaviour. I was certain the boxer had become a psychiatrist after he'd retired, to help those like her like a real hero, and now he sat on his ass all day, talking and typing, and when he went home after a day of work, leaving behind those he said he tried to help, he gave himself a pat on the back for being such a great dude.
True or false, the theory amused me. But it didn't matter, in the end. All I needed to do was convince him I didn't need his help.
"I spoke to Miss Guerrero this morning and she claimed there's been no bad blood between the two of you. Can you confirm that or would you like to deny it?"
I shrugged. "The only blood between us was smeared all over our cell's walls last night."
Doctor Jones raised an eyebrow.
"I mean I can confirm it."
"So you haven't tried to harm her and she hasn't tried to harm you?"
"I haven't. She hasn't."
The psychiatrist, like a real professional, picked up the sandwich he'd abandoned earlier and started eating again. "Have you ever had any suicidal thoughts?"
"The occasional joking around in school. You know, when you didn't study for a test and you ask your friends to shove you down the stairs so you'll break your neck and die? That sort of stuff."
Another bite of tuna sandwich. "Do you have a history of self-harm?"
The whole thing kept getting better and better. "Does biting my nails count?"
"No."
"Then that's your answer."
I hoped Jones would get tired of the interrogation and let me walk free. How hard was it to slap a sane label on my evaluation file and move on? My luck, however, had taken a turn for the worse. I was stuck with the doctor for at least an hour and a half, a long time he used to ask questions about my mental state that I could answer with ease: have you ever felt like you're not in control of your own thoughts? Do you experience an unusual amount of paranoia? Is the line between imagination and reality sometimes blurred to you?
I breezed through the examination, to my own delight. I wasn't fucking psychotic. I was a sane human being, capable of withstanding this guy's endless inquirues with answers ready to fire at all times. I didn't miss beats, didn't hesitate. I poured all the confidence I could gather into my words, into the right answers to everything the doctor asked. I'd practically been born for this.
Until he hit me with the final question.
"Do you see things others don't?"
I knew what I had to give him: a simple no, nothing more. Still, my mind stumbled over the question and when I opened my mouth, no sound came out. I couldn't tell him I could see ghosts, not if I wanted to prove my sanity, but I couldn't get that pesky word out of my mouth easily. The Bloody Boy, the bathroom spirit, the teenager still performing her self-destructive routine behind me; denying I had my ability felt like denying their existence. A betrayal of sorts.
I faltered. But as the wise Winston Churchill had apparently said: If you're going through hell, keep going.
"No."
To this day, I still don't know how I managed to say it after a few too many seconds of silence. I made an effort to look Doctor Jones in the eyes, his dark irises finding my lighter ones. I thought I could feel a tension between us, though that could've been mere courtesy of the slight paranoia I'd experienced ever since I'd seen the damn message. And as I sat there, holding an improvised staring contest with Psychiatrist Frankenclaus, I felt as nervous as the day before in B-block's bathroom.
chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.
I could have leapt out of my seat joyfully when Doctor Jones shoved the last bit of tuna sandwich into his mouth and leaned back in his chair. He'd let me get away with it. "What stumps us," he said, "is that no sharp objects have been found in your cell. They haven't found any such objects on you or on Miss Guerrero, either. The blood on the wall must be yours, but the gashes on your palms, or so I've heard, were too deep to be made by human hands alone."
"If you're looking for answers, I'm as lost as you are." It was only half a lie.
He shook his head, adjusted his tiny glasses. "I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary with you," he told me, and I felt the weight of the world be lifted from my shoulders. "You appear normal, not disturbed. I've enjoyed getting to know you and I wouldn't peg you as someone who'd slit her own palms to write eerie messages on a wall. Would you agree that's not the kind of person you are?"
Did I look like an idiot?
"I would."
"Then I have nothing more to say for now." Jones smiled, which was almost a comfort. "My evaluation will treat you gently. There's a chance you'll be sent to see me again, but I hope it won't be necessary."
That was all I'd wanted to hear. I stood up, trying to hide how eager I was to do so, and let his words sink in, only smiling when what they meant began to dawn. I'd proven my sanity was intact and kept my ability hidden successfully.
But before I departed, there was still one question I had to ask. "You might not be able to answer this, Dr. Jones, but… what's gonna happen with this incident? I mean, what will the higher-ups do with it?"
Doctor Jones let out a humorless chuckle and ran a meaty hand through his dark mop of hair. "My guess is," he said in a monotone, "that they'll investigate. And then, when they can't find anything, what happened will be swept under the metaphorical rug."
There wasn't much I could say to that, so I didn't say anything, decided I was free to go and made for the door without looking back, leaving the doctor alone with his ghost. He was right. With enough time, Lonewood's employees could indeed forget the bathroom spirit's actions.
But I couldn't.
When the officer who'd escorted me all day told me I'd behaved well and that his bosses believed the extra supervision wasn't a necessary precaution anymore, I barely listened. All I could think about was the spirit tormenting me. If I had to stay in Lonewood for eleven more months, if I had to survive that long, the ghost in the bathroom was an irritating complication.
It occurred to me that I had to investigate the son of a bitch if I wanted to live. Who was it and why was I being targeted? The first step to getting rid of the ghost was identifying it and the exact threat it posed.
But where could I start?
The answer came to me soon enough, leading me back to the person, no, ghost all my troubles had started with: the Bloody Boy, with his hazy smile and all-seeing eyes and the gaping bullet hole in his chest. Liz' personal stalker. If I wanted to uncover the bathroom spirit's identity to save my life, why not uncover the kid's identity first? His spirit followed Liz around at all times. I could pry an answer as to why out of her. That, at least, would be a good start.
I knew what I had to do. I needed to ask Liz, entitled smartass Liz, to help me solve this mystery.
But that could be easier said than done.